He said at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, a correspondent for Censor.NET reports.

"We plan to start putting pressure on smugglers tomorrow to attract additional funds to the state budget. Ukraine’s state budget amounts to 991 billion hryvnia. The estimated customs revenue amounts to 343 billion hryvnia while we expect that the budget will receive 70 - 100 billion hryvnia after we deal with the contraband practices. That is about $4 billion. We now take pains to receive $1.9 billion loan from the IMF," the minister said.

He stressed that the Interior Ministry will be very tough on smugglers regardless of who they are.

Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman said the government had already drafted an action plan to combat smuggling.

"Smugglers siphon off dozens of billions of hryvnia from the Ukrainian budget. I am not going to tolerate this. Last year, the budget additionally received over 70 billion hryvnia due to our efforts," the PM stressed.

"Whoever is involved in it, our stance is going to be tough. I emphasize that it doesn’t matter whether we are talking about my fellow party members, people from the Presidential Administration, people from the system ... ," he said.

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